You'll find setters just about everywhere gamebirds are hunted in North America, including the rocky slopes that chukars inhabit.

Here in the colonies, though, we like our field sports rough around the edges, and despite a well-heeled effort by some to lock up, lease, and sell wildlife that belongs to all of us–don't get me started--it falls to our dogs, especially our pointers and spaniels, to find birds for us. The fetching part is the icing on the cake, at least as far as most setter owners are concerned.

Truth is, it's been a while since setters have been known for their retrieving abilities, if ever. It's also been a long time since setters dominated our version of English gentility, i.e., the National Pointing Dog Championships in Grand Junction, Tennessee. The last – and only – time I was there, there were something like two or three setters entered in a field of approximately 40 pointers, although the pointer's connection to England is even more tenuous than the setter's. Go figure.

That most setters can't compete with a pointer's raw, physical stamina and range in a brutal three-hour horseback trial is not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people can't compete with the raw, physical talent of Michael Jordan, either, but that doesn't mean that any one of us, given enough practice, couldn't get pretty damn good at a game of horse.

And so it goes for setters. Believe me, there's enough run and drive in a good setter to keep just about anyone happy, even a veteran, if aging, foot hunter like me, who happens to like hard-charging, big-running dogs. And as for style, well…watch a setter with a twelve o'clock tail stick a covey of Huns and then tell me just what it is on this green earth that is prettier than that. George Hickox once told me that his description of a good bird dog is a dog that runs and finds game in a way that pleases him. He got it exactly right.

My setters please me. All the setters I've owned or trained have been small, fast and flashy, although there's a sizeable contingent who like larger, slower dogs, among them the Ryman, Old Hemlock and DeCoverly strains. I've hunted over several of these jowly, galloping animals and most have been fine dogs indeed, with plenty of bird sense and drive. My impression is that, at the end of the day, neither style has a monopoly on game produced for the gun. To each his own.

Common to all setters – or at least, virtually every one I've been around – is a warm, loving personality. Brittanys are the imps of the dog world, as happy to tweak your proper sensibilities as they are to charge into a stand of muddy cattails after a running pheasant. Labs are big, happy-go-lucky goofs, always ready for a game of fetch, and pointers can be surprisingly clownish, although that's hardly their reputation.

Springers seem driven to work, possessed of inner demons that drive them to do something, even when they're not hunting. But setters, almost to the dog, will hunt their hearts out in the field, but when the day is done, seem content and happy to curl up in your lap, gaze languorously into you eyes, and then nod off into dreamland.